Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight

by Mercedes Lackey

  She turned her head—and bit his ear. Not hard, but it startled him and he let her go. “You’ll have to earn it by catching me first,” she taunted, and ran into the ekele.

  He ran after her, and for the next fever-warm candlemark or so, they were too busy with each other to think of anything else.

  After a much more pleasant shower-bath, this time shared, and yet another change of clothing, Darian stumbled over Keisha’s bundle in the middle of the floor of the outer room. He picked it up, saw to his relief that it was undamaged, and looked for a place to put it down.

  “Oh, good, I was afraid we might have trampled that,” she said, emerging from the bedroom and tying her hair back as she walked. “Here, let me.”

  She held out her hands for it, and he obediently handed the bundle to her.

  She sat down and began to unwrap it in her lap—first the outer square of cloth, which he realized had been her scarf. A scarf was something no modern Healer was ever without, since a scarf could be put to so many useful purposes. Inside the scarf was a bundle of soft, dark-brown furs. They looked rather like weasel or muskrat, but were much softer and the fur was more plush.

  Keisha put the furs aside, and brought out something made of leather and lined with a coarser fur—she shook it out and held it up to him, beaming. “Yes, that fits—have a look, do you like it?”

  He took it from her and turned it around—and almost dropped it, stepping back involuntarily.

  He stared, struck dumb, as familiar patterns of embroidery branded themselves on his mind.

  Keisha’s smile faded and she looked at him with uncertainty. “You—you don’t like it—I’ll—”

  “No, no, no, that’s not it—” It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be—it was only a superficial resemblance, surely!

  But he put the vest down, and went straight to the storage chest where he kept the few precious relics of his childhood that had pleasant memories attached. He opened it, reached in, and brought out a small, cloth-wrapped package of his own. This he took over to Keisha and opened, laying out the embroidered leather vest that lay inside next to the one she had brought him.

  Though the colors of the second vest were faded and stained, the leather worn—though the motifs had been embroidered using wool and flax threads rather than tufts of dyed hair—and though the older vest was barely half the size of the new one—there was no doubt.

  In all other ways, they were identical.

  They stared at the vests, then into each other’s eyes. And finally, Keisha managed to speak.

  “Havens!” She exclaimed involuntarily. “They’re the same! But how?”

  “I don’t know, Keisha,” Darian breathed. “Where did you get this?”

  Twelve

  “Wait—” Keisha said, feeling that she had to slow all this down, at least a little. Things were happening too fast for her. “This could just be a flower, and flowers are a universal embroidery motif—”

  “But it’s not a flower,” Darian interrupted. “It’s a radial repeat of the Trappers’ Guild symbol, see?” He blocked off all but one quarter of the spiky circle, and sure enough, Keisha had no trouble in recognizing the stylized trap. “It’s Mother’s own design, making it repeat like that; I’ve never seen anyone else use it.”

  So much for it being an accident or a coincidence, Keisha thought. “Well, I got it from Ghost Cat—they got it in trade-goods from one of the tribes that came here looking for Healing.”

  Darian started to move, and she put out her hand and pushed him back down into his chair. “It will keep for half a day,” she told him. “If you wait until tomorrow morning, you’ll be able to actually talk with someone; if you go now, you’ll only have to wait until morning when everyone wakes up.”

  “But—” Darian was looking a bit wild-eyed, and she was in complete sympathy.

  “I know, you need to do something, and the smartest thing to do is take these vests to Firesong. Maybe he can make some sense out of them. Then—well, I think we should talk to the Vale Council and see what everyone else says.” She was actually grasping at straws, but he nodded, agreeing with her, and she sighed with relief. The last thing she wanted was for him to go running off into the darkness to find a dyheli and ride off to the Ghost Cat village. Kuari or no Kuari, the mental state he was in was conducive to mistakes. Suddenly, she had a nightmare vision of Darian, his dyheli, or both falling on the night-shrouded trail and breaking a leg.

  Or both legs. Or worse.

  But at least she had managed to come up with an idea that made him feel that he was accomplishing something. She followed him out the door and down the trail as he set off at a lope for Firesong’s ekele, knowing that it was going to be a very long night.

  It turned out to be not quite as long for her; she kept dozing off, first while Darian and Firesong worked over the vests, then later, while Darian and most of the Vale Council of Elders discussed possibilities in endless detail. In fact, the last thing she remembered was half-waking as someone picked her up and laid her on a pile of pillows, covering her with a soft lap-rug.

  She woke a second time when Darian shook her; when she raised her head, she saw from the thin light outside that it was dawn. Darian looked tired, but by no means discouraged; in fact, he appeared to be ready to set out for the north on a moment’s notice. “Ready to go to Ghost Cat?” he asked, taking it for granted that she would want to be with him.

  She caught herself just as she started to feel resentment; there was nothing to feel resentment about! She didn’t have patients, except the ones at Errold’s Grove, and they weren’t due to see her for a few days. And he knew that; he kept as close an eye on her schedule as he did his own.

  “As soon as I change,” she agreed, rubbing her eyes and yawning. Then she looked critically at Darian’s clothing. “You ought to also,” she chided gently. “It won’t take more than a moment.”

  He looked down at his rumpled, stained clothing, and blushed with embarrassment. He might not be a peacock like Firesong, but at least he isn’t as slovenly as a great many men I’ve known.

  “You’re right, and I will. Firesong once said to me, ‘Dress your best. Heroes in paintings always look terrific, and you never know when it might be your turn to become a legend.’ Perfect Tayledras reasoning, isn’t it? Come on, then,” he said, and offered her his hand.

  Before the sun actually crested the horizon, they were in the saddle and on their way past the Vale entrance—but Darian looked odd to her when Keisha glanced over at him. He was preoccupied with something, his forehead creased, his eyes narrowed as he concentrated. The tension suddenly around him made her muscles clench.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked sharply, wondering what had him so nervey all of a sudden. Both the dyheli flicked their ears back at him; they sensed something strange as well.

  “I’m trying to remember something,” he murmured, rubbing his temple. “Something about dreams....” His voice had a distracted tone; whatever the “dream” was, his mood was odd—as if the dream had overwhelming significance, and he had to recall it at all costs.

  It can’t be that—it’s just that he’s not thinking clearly.

  “What, have you been dreaming that the Northern Spirit Cat has been trying to send you messages?” she asked, trying to put a chuckle in her voice. She meant it teasingly, to try and get him out of this mood, but he responded as if he had just sat down on a tack.

  Even his dyheli stopped dead, ears flattened, as he jerked around to stare at her, eyes wide, pupils dilated.

  What did I say?

  “That’s it!” he shouted. “That’s it!”

  But without bothering to tell her what “it” was, he bent over the dyheli’s neck. In response to an unvoiced command, the young stag launched into a full gallop, and Keisha’s followed, leaving her no choice but to stifle her curiosity and hang on for dear life.

  They reached the Ghost Cat village in half the time it would normally have taken; the dyheli stagge
red into the village on their last bit of energy, and stopped, sides heaving. Unlike horses, they were in no danger of foundering, or Keisha would have been more worried about them than she was about Darian. Darian jumped down out of the saddle. As he sprinted for the Shaman’s log house, with the bundle containing the new vest clutched in one hand, his dyheli began its own slow, careful cool-down. Keisha took her time dismounting, and followed, noting the curious looks that Darian attracted as he ran, a small part of her hoping that he hadn’t lost his wits, the rest of her full of a faltering anxiety.

  The second surprise of the day came. The Shaman must have been expecting Darian, for he flung his door open before Darian even reached it and beckoned him to come inside. And when he looked up and saw Keisha standing beside her dyheli, he waved to her as well.

  The two men disappeared inside. She entered the door in time to hear Darian say, ”... so is there a Raven clan?”

  “I don’t know out of my own knowledge, but the meaning of your dream and mine is now clear,” Shaman Celin said somberly, and looked down at the vest spread out on the bench between them. “This, however—this comes from Snow Fox tribe. There are still folk from Snow Fox among us, cured, but not strong enough yet to travel, for the cure itself exhausted them. Let us speak with them, and perhaps they can give us the last piece of what we need to know.”

  Darian was on his feet immediately, so completely focused on the Shaman that Keisha might not even have been there.

  And strangely, this didn’t trouble her; she was too relieved to discover that, whatever all this was about, Shaman Celin obviously knew all about it as well.

  As she trailed along in Darian’s wake, she felt a real sense of relief and even anticipation, which completely replaced the anxiety she’d felt on the way here. This was real, something she could deal with, and a perfectly reasonable and understandable obsession; if it had been her parents rather than his, she would have been just as focused as he was.

  Absolutely. They may drive me crazy, but they’re my parents. I know how he must feel.

  There was a log house in the farthest circle that had no tribal totems ornamenting it; instead, the house was decorated in stylized carvings of dyheli. Once again, the “holy dyheli” identified those who had come to seek a cure from Ghost Cat and the Sanctuary.

  Here they encountered a slight difficulty, for the Snow Fox tribe spoke a different variant of the northern tongue. It took Darian and the Shaman several tries before the most senior of the men left in charge of the invalids understood what they were asking. Keisha couldn’t follow him at all; he spoke so much faster than the Ghost Cat folk that he almost seemed to be speaking a different language altogether.

  He wasn’t all that old either; just out of adolescence, and probably newly come to full Warrior status. He was in charge of a band of young men his own age who had remained behind to guard and protect the three women and gaggle of youngsters who had not been strong enough to travel back to the tribal lands with the rest. The Shaman stood beside Darian as he and the young warrior sat facing each other on a bench just outside the door, with the morning sun full on them.

  Keisha stood by and watched, rather than listened, as Darian grew more proficient in the Snow Fox dialect with each passing moment. She suspected from the faint tingling she felt along the surface of her skin that he was using magic to help speed his acquisition of the tongue. The young warrior, biting his lip earnestly, was a bit alarmed.

  He must know it’s magic—but it isn’t dyheli magic. And Darian must look completely alien to the young man, with his Tayledras clothing and lighter hair and eyes than the Northerners had.

  The Shaman saw this as well, and stopped the conversation to reassure him; after a few words, the youngster became quite charmingly cooperative.

  Darian stooped and took a bit of charred stick from the ground to draw a crude map on the bench where they both sat, but the young man shook his head and put his hand over Darian’s. Clearly he didn’t understand maps; or at least, he wasn’t able to translate what he knew to map form.

  They do so much by rote— Keisha bit her lip, hoping Darian’s memory was up to this.

  Darian listened to him with fierce concentration as he described what must have been the journey here, committing every landmark to memory; frowning so, his eyebrows almost meeting in the center of his forehead, that Keisha knew he’d have a headache before this was over.

  At last, Darian sat back, his frown fading and being replaced with a smile. He thanked the youngster—that much, at least, Keisha understood!—made some polite comments, then he and Celin took their leave.

  Darian reached out and took her hand as he passed her, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry if I seemed to be ignoring you, ke’chara,” Darian said apologetically as soon as they were out in the open again. “I—”

  “You were trying to get as much information as you could in the shortest possible time,” Keisha interrupted, and smiled at his relief. “Havens, did you think I couldn’t see that? But you had better give me a full explanation later on, and not leave anything out!” She squeezed his hand back, and his smile turned so warm she almost blushed.

  “I will, on the way back, I promise.” Darian turned then to the Shaman, squinting against the sunlight. “Celin, I can’t begin to thank you—”

  “Nay, do not thank me. It is the Ghost Cat’s doing, and nothing of mine. If he wills you to this task, then I do no more than my duty to aid you,” the Shaman said solemnly. “And you will be wanting a guide.”

  Darian was now the one looking surprised at Celin’s words.

  Celin laughed. “What, did I not tell you this was the Ghost Cat’s will? You shall go northward into the white; this, he has told me. You will need one of us to guide you. I have thought upon it, and I believe your guide should be Hywel. In doing this, you will permit him to discharge his life-debt to you.”

  Darian and Keisha both knew better than to argue with the Shaman when he used that phrase. A life-debt was a serious thing among the northerners, and it was not something that any northerner wanted hanging over his head. By Keisha and Darian being instrumental in saving Hywel’s brother, Hywel had incurred a life-debt to them both that would hold him back, socially and personally, in many ways until he repaid it. He could not marry, could not even court a young woman, and could not incur any other major responsibilities until this one was discharged.

  Besides, Hywel would have been her first choice as a guide. He might be young, but he was sharp, intelligent, and observant.

  “What you have done for us would oblige us even to your whims. This is more than a whim you have conjured as a game. It is a personal imperative. You go now to the Vale, and make your plans,” Celin continued. “I will see to Hywel and Hywel’s mother, making her easy with the journey her son must take with you.”

  Darian sighed, and accepted the Shaman’s words without any argument, since it was obvious that Celin had made up his mind about all this.

  Or the Ghost Cat made it up for him.

  “We’ll head back, then—we’ve borrowed two more dyheli. I don’t want to impose on the two we rode on before; they practically broke their necks to get us here quickly.” He must have already asked the dyheli, for two volunteers had joined up with the two cooling down, waiting for someone to come take the tack off the first two and put it on them.

  “Go, go, go!” the Shaman said, making shooing motions at them. “Send one of the holy ones to come for Hywel when you are ready.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else for them at that point but to take the saddles from the backs of their weary original mounts and transfer them to their new volunteers.

  They were out of sight of the Ghost Cat village before Darian took a deep breath, shook himself out of his reverie, and turned to find her staring at him expectantly. “I definitely owe you an explanation,” he began sheepishly.

  “Definitely,” she replied, with just a touch of acid—enough to let him know that she w
as more than tired of waiting. “I have been incredibly patient, understanding, noble, forbearing—”

  “Enough, I get the idea!” he cried, holding up his hands as if to fend her off. “I guess the place to start is—I’ve been having these dreams, except I couldn’t remember them afterward.”

  “I know.” When he looked at her oddly, she added, “It was like sleeping with a kicking dyheli fawn. Or rather, trying to sleep.”

  He blushed. “Anyway,” he continued valiantly, “When you said something about the ‘Spirit Cat’ talking to me, I remembered suddenly what those dreams were about.” He shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know why I couldn’t remember before.”

  “Maybe you were afraid,” she said slowly, remembering the aura of fear that had hung over him during those dreams. It had been the fear, and not the restlessness, that had awakened her.

  He looked very thoughtful. “Maybe. Especially since I didn’t have any notion that they were supposed to help me. They were weird through and through.” He shrugged. “The point is, they all involved the Ghost Cat and a different totem, an enormous Raven. Not only that, but the day I was made a Clanbrother, the Ghost Cat appeared at the ceremony and left a raven feather at my place. Nobody seemed to have an explanation, and no one thought it was a bad omen, so I just dismissed it in favor of everything else that had to be done.”

  “Until I triggered your memory.” Now she understood why he’d acted as if she had jabbed him.

  “I just had this inspiration—no, that’s too mild. I suddenly knew that the Ghost Cat was trying to tell me something—that I needed to find the Raven tribe, so that was why I wanted to see Celin—”

  “Because you wanted to find out if there is a Raven tribe.” She nodded slowly, as all of the pieces began to fit together for her. “And he didn’t know for sure, but the vests came from Snow Fox, so he figured the Snow Fox people would know. I take it that there is?”